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Archive for the ‘Recipes’ Category

Baked Bacon & Egg

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on May 9, 2013 | 3 Comments »

I shared this recipe over on our website…. but thought it was mean not to share it here too as it is totally delicious!

As you will remember we had our Bacon Competition for St. Patrick’s Weekend. I’ve already shared the winning recipe, Bacon & Cabbage Soup, with you, and was full of great plans to try the other recipes in the weeks immediately after, but life as always got in the way.

Finally, today, I got a chance to try Ruth McKenna’s recipe.  Ruth’s recipe is absolutely delicious.

Baked egg, with bacon and sprinkle of black pepper

It was particularly lovely to make them today using our own bacon, first baby spinach leaves from the garden and our own eggs.  Only thing we bought was the goat’s cheese.

We greedily ate 2 each!  You must try this.

Ingredients (for 4 eggs):

  • 4 streaky rashers
  • 4 leaves of spinach
  • 35 g goat’s cheese
  • 4 fresh eggs

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 deg. C

Eggs, spinach, goat's cheese and rashers

 

Grease a muffin tray.  Line each depression with a slice of bacon.  Next add your spinach leaf.  Crumble some goat’s cheese (or feta cheese) in next.  Break an egg over the whole lot.

BakedEgg2

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes depending on your oven and how you like your eggs.

Enjoy!

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An Invitation from Nicholas Mosse

Posted in Recipes, tagged on May 8, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

I was truly honoured recently to be asked to write a post for the Nicholas Mosse Entertainment blog.

Pop on over and read the 2 recipes I shared there…. they are great to serve as a ‘coolant’ with a curry :)

Screen Shot 2013-05-08 at 16.39.30

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Warm Rice Salad

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , on April 7, 2013 | 9 Comments »

This recipe is such a part of our ‘regulars’ here in Redwood, that I never even considered sharing it with you!  That is until Dee from Greenside Up was over and we served this salad with pulled pork.  Dee loved it and asked if it was up on the blog…. and I realised it wasn’t.

And then when Mona and Ron from WiseWords were here…. they said the same…. share!

Talk about what’s right under your nose!  We would probably have this salad once or twice a month.  And I never thought of sharing.  Woops.  :)

Rice Salad

It is perfect with so many things…. barbecued chicken, pork, ribs, duck…. anything at all.

It has been adapted from a very old series of cookery magazines I used to buy.

Ingredients:

  • 2 oranges.
  • Vegetable stock – amount will be explained in a moment!
  • 8 oz basmati rice
  • Cinnamon Stick
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 carrots, sliced
  • 1 pepper, sliced
  • 50 g/2 oz dried apricots
  • 50 g/2 oz toasted nuts – whatever your preference is.
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 tbsp. white wine vinegar
  • Parlsey.

Method:

Peel one of the oranges and cut the strips into very fine shreds.  Squeeze the juice from both oranges and top up with vegetable stock to bring it to 500 ml/17 fl oz.

Put the rice, orange juice mixture and cinnamon stick into saucepan.  Bring to the boil.  Stir.  Then cover with a tight fitting lid and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and leave to stand for about 10 minutes to absorb last of the liquid.

Stir in 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and keep warm.

Heat the remaining oil in a saucepan and fry off the cumin seeds, stirring frequently.  Add the orange shreds, carrots, pepper, apricots, nuts and salt/pepper.  Fry for 5 minutes.

Mix the rice and vegetables together and stir in the wine vinegar.

Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Enjoy!

 

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Farm Fresh Recipes – A Review

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , on March 24, 2013 | 4 Comments »

A couple of weeks ago as I sat here working away at the computer, something caught my eye…. a tweet from the folks at Cico asking for people to review a book.  Now most of the time, these things flash up in front of me and I ignore.   Why did I not ignore this tweet?

I am not sure!  Perhaps what I was working on was just boring me!  Anyway I checked out the link and instantly loved the idea of recipes working through the seasonality of the year.  I immediately signed up and was delighted to receive my copy a couple of days later.

Farm Fresh Recipes by Heather Cameron

Farm Fresh Recipes by Heather Cameron

And what a book…. I love the recipes and the photographs are just totally amazing!  A really beautiful book.

The book starts with the story of how Heather is now a farmer.  Her story is so similar to ours.  Her husband, her Mum and herself bought a house they liked which just happened to be in the midst of a 40 acre farm outside Vancouver.  While we don’t have 40 acres… we bought this house not knowing what we would do with the 5 acres around it!

Heather, the house you bought must have had the same interior decorator as ours!  Paisley borders, blue nylon carpet, swaggy and lacy curtains!  All so so familiar!

Heather’s farm is called ‘Missing Goat Farm’…. there has to be a story there… and I want to hear that :)

But onto the recipes.  There is a wonderful collection of recipes to suit each season.  I cannot wait for my rhubarb to come on so I can try out the rhubarb and rosemary jam – doesn’t that sound such a delicious combination.

Another thing I loved about this book…. the ingredients are listed in both US and European measurements.

The first recipe I decided to try were the little merignue tarts.  Heather makes her lemon curd using Meyer lemons.  I’ve never seen them available here, so I used our regular lemons and followed Darina Allen’s directions for the lemon curd.

Meringue Tarts

Lemon Meringue Tartlet

Lemon Meringue Tartlet

These are so delicious – you could eat an awful lot of them!  You have been warned.

For the Meringue:

  • 4 egg whites
  • 200 g (1 cup) caster sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Crumb Crust:

  • 125 g (1 1/4 cups) digestive biscuit crumbs
  • 50 g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
  • 60 g (1/4 cup) butter melted.

Preheat oven to 180 deg. C/Gas 4.

Beat the egg whites until they begin to firm up.  Slowly start to add the sugar.  You may need to stop and scrape down the sides.  Keep beating for about 15 minutes until the egg whites are firm and can stand up on their own and the sugar has dissolved completely.  Fold in the vanilla extract.

Mix the crumb crust ingredients together in a bowl.  Press the mixture firmly into individual, lined muffin pans.

Bake the crust in the preheated oven for c. 10 minutes.  Let the shells cool completely and then spoon in your lemon curd filling.

Pile the meringue high as you can on top of lemon curd.

Bake the tarts in the oven for another 10 minutes, but keep your eye on them, so the meringue doesn’t over brown.

Let cool and then enjoy!

Look at all that lovely lemony gooeyness

Look at all that lovely lemony gooeyness

Farm-fresh Recipes by Heather Cameron can be bought right here.  Trust me you will enjoy it.

Thank you to Cico books for sending me this beautiful book.

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Irish Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , on March 16, 2013 | 2 Comments »

So you know we had the competition recently for a ‘bacon’ recipe to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.  Well we had a winner – Paul Hurst who it turns out lives just 10 miles away from us!

We had a number of entries all of which sound so delicious and we will be trying them all out and sharing them with you…. I am especially looking forward to trying the Bourbon Old Fashioned with a bacon infusion!!!!

Poor Barry, our chef judge, from Harte’s Bar & Grill in Kildare had a challenge to choose a winner!  Thank you Barry for taking on the job.

And of course thank you to all who sent in their recipes.

So here is Paul’s recipe for Bacon & Cabbage Soup which he has adapted from Clodagh McKenna’s recipe.  I made a batch for our lunch today…. you should consider making a batch to have before, or after, any parade you might be attending…. it is delicious and warming! :)

Paul did say he adjusts the recipe to taste and by eye!  I had to do the same!  This recipe is a slight variation on Paul’s.

Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Ingredients:

  • 5 streaky bacon slices, diced
  • 2 potatoes, diced
  • 1 tablespoon of Oregano
  • 1 onion diced
  • 2 gloves of garlic crushed
  • 1 tablespoon of butter
  • 1 lt of homemade chicken stock
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • Salt & Black Pepper.
  • 2 cups (about half a head) of Savoy cabbage, diced

Method:

Melt the butter in a heavy based saucepan, add the bacon, onion, potato and garlic.  Cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes.

Add your stock, tomatoes and oregano and bring to the boil.

Simmer for about 10 – 15 minutes until potatoes have cooked.

Then add your cabbage and simmer for a further 5 – 10 minutes depending on how tender you like your cabbage.

Season to taste.

Irish Bacon & Cabbage Soup

Enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day

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Redwood Fish Soup

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , , on December 4, 2012 | 4 Comments »

I hate waste.

There is a ‘system’ for leftovers in this house.

Humans → dogs/cats → pigs → hens → compost heap

So last week we had hake for dinner which I cooked a la Neven Maguire’s recipe – Hake with Clams, Fennel and Cherry Tomatoes – except it was minus the clams.  Let me tell you it was delicious.  I had one large piece of hake which was just a little too big for the two of us.

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So next day I had a small piece of cooked hake left and some of the wonderful squashed tomatoes (the last of our own crop).  Now there was no way this was going to the dogs or cats!  Humans come first!

So I decided to try my hand at adapting the recipe and making a soup/chowder with it.  I obviously mustn’t have had much faith in my ability as I never took a photo!!!

Recipe:

Serves 2

  • 1/4 oz chopped chorizo
  • 1/2 onion chopped
  • 4 cherry tomatoes
  • Pinch sugar
  • Pinch paprika
  • Dash of rice vinegar
  • dash of Olive Oil
  • 1 oz butter
  • 1.5 oz flour
  • 1/2 litre fish stock
  • Leftover sauce and fish.

Method:

Heat olive oil and fry off the onion and chorizo for about 3 minutes.  Add in the cherry tomatoes, sugar, paprika and rice vinegar.

In a separate pan, melt the butter and add in the flour.  Cook, stirring continuously for about 2 minutes.  Slowly add in the fish stock a little at the time.  When all blended in, add the remaining mixture, plus your left over sauce.

Bring to the boil.

I blitzed the soup at this stage, which turned it a lovely creamy pink colour.

Flake in your left over fish and serve with some crusty bread.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

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An Irish Minestrone Soup…. almost

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , , , , on November 13, 2012 | 2 Comments »

The weather has been so grey since yesterday….. yes, I’d say there are 50 shades of grey out there…. DEFINITELY!

This is just reminding me that only last week, I was still harvesting (granted from the polytunnel) but there were delicious tomatoes, peppers, and my hugely proud of aubergines! Yes, for the first time ever I managed to grow aubergines (egg-plant to non-Irish folk).

I am not going to let this greyness get in on top of me!!!!

So last week we had the end of harvest mixed bag of vegetables that needed using.

aubergines (eggplant) tomatoes

I thought a variation of Minestrone Soup???

So that’s what it started out as…. but it didn’t end up as soup!!!!

You are probably wondering about the strange mix of vegetables?  I hate to see waste and there were a few bits and pieces lingering that just needed to be used up.  Hence the potatoes went in there too!

Ingredients:

  • 1 onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • Olive oil
  • 1 medium aubergine (egg-plant)
  • 1 large courgette (zucchini)
  • 6 or 8 fresh tomatoes
  • Handful of runner beans
  • 1 pepper
  • 2 or 3 small potatoes cubed
  • 1 lt of chicken stock
  • 1 tin of tomatoes
  • Pasta – quantities will be explained in a bit!!
  • Selection of fresh herbs – I used oregano and basil
  • Salt and Pepper

Method:

Finely chop the onion and garlic.  Heat the oil in a large saucepan and gently colour the onion and garlic.

Chop your other vegetables into cubes and add these into saucepan with the stock and the tin of tomatoes.

Bring to the boil, then simmer gently (about 20 minutes) until the vegetables are almost cooked through.

At this point I added in about 2 ozs of Penne pasta with the herbs and seasoning and cooked for another 5 – 10 minutes.

And that was (I thought) my Minestrone Soup ready for lunch the next day!!!!  So you could just stop here!!!!

We did not!

When himself came home….had a taste and smell….. and suggested that it would make a nice pasta bake.  Yes, the carnivore himself, suggested a vegetarian pasta bake!

So next day, I added in a further tin of tomatoes.  About another 4 oz pasta.  Topped it all with Mossfield Cheese.

Baked in the oven for about 25 minutes.  Sprinkle with fresh basil.

Pasta Bake

Comfort food at its best!

And healthy :)

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

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Oldfarm Buttermilk Chicken

Posted in All things food, Recipes, tagged , , , , on November 6, 2012 | 5 Comments »

Do you have this thing going on?  You read a recipe, or mark one and say “I must try that”….. then time passes, days, months, years even and you still haven’t tried it?

Well that’s the way it was with me and this recipe.  Having heard/read about it, probably 4 years ago, I finally got around to doing it last week!!!!

When we get a chicken here – be it one of our own, or a bought in free-range one – generally speaking we portion it out and freeze what we aren’t going to use immediately.  So it was that last week I found 2 or 3 packs of chicken wings in the freezer – they too had probably be lurking about for a while!

We had the buttermilk and I grabbed the opportunity to try the recipe.  So far, so good!

Aha! Not so!

I check the recipes.  I knew Mona and The Chef over at WiseWords had a buttermilk chicken recipe in their book (have you got that book yet? You should!).  Checked out the recipe…. it called for flour (we were all out), and deep frying (I don’t have one)!

It was a day when Alfie was away with the car.  I am home alone, ‘carless’ in Redwood, nearest shop 4 miles away.

Did the ‘google’ thing to come up with some other ideas, and here’s how I adapted the Buttermilk Chicken dish.

Buttermilk Chicken with oatmeal coating

Ingredients:

  • 6 x chicken wings
  • Half litre of Buttermilk
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • Salt & Black Pepper
  • 4 oz  Jumbo Oat flakes
  • 4 oz  Pure Gram flour
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds

Method:

Place chicken wings (or whatever portions you are using) in a shallow tray.  Sprinkle with salt, pepper and brown sugar.  Cover with buttermilk.  Leave to soak overnight.

Next day line a baking tray with some parchment paper or tinfoil.  Place a cooling rack on top of baking tray.

Mix your flour, oatflakes and cumin seeds together and dip each piece of chicken into mix to coat.  Place your coated chicken pieces on top of wire rack and leave to stand for about an hour.  (This gives them a chance to dry out a bit.)

When you are ready to cook your chicken pieces, heat your oven to 180 deg.  Place the chicken pieces (still on the wire rack) into oven and cook – the chicken wings took about 30 minutes.  Obviously bigger pieces will take longer.

The oatmeal gives a really crunchy coating to the lovely succulent chicken underneath!

Enjoy :)

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Green Curry

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , on October 24, 2012 | 4 Comments »

While Alfie was in hospital for 2 weeks it was weird having to adjust to cooking for one again!  I wasn’t totally succesful with it!  And I have to admit that some nights I was totally lazy and just used leftovers that had been frozen. :)

Now that he’s back at home, and we’re both on a ‘healthy’ diet (well kind of!) I’m back in cooking mode.

Alfie is not a fan of vegetarian – surprise, surprise!  I am still trying desperately to have at least one dinner a week a meatless one.  I’ve been told not to tell him there’s no meat in it, and then he’ll be OK with it!!!!!

So this week we had a couple of very large overgrown courgettes…. now transformed into marrows, and my sister, had mentioned that she used to do a marrow casserole with a curry twist to it.  We are also still harvesting the last of our peas and beans, some of the runner beans had got a bit large, so they went into the pot as well.  You could obviously substitute whatever green vegetables you have to hand. Here’s what developed with my selection.

It’s a variation on the Beef Malay dish that we do so often.

Green Vegetable Curry

Ingredients for Green Paste:

  • 1 red onion
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • large piece of ginger
  • 1 lemongrass stalk – trimmed and chopped
  • 1 green chilli
  • large bunch of parsley or coriander
  • 1 teasp turmeric
  • 2 tablesps water

To make the paste blitz all of the above together.
Ingredients for Curry

  • Large marrow, peeled and chopped into bite size pieces
  • Handful (about 12) overgrown runner beans, chopped into 2 cm pieces
  • Handful of peas and beans
  • 2 onions
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 2 or 3 Lime leaves
  • 3 star anise
  • 400 ml coconut milk
  • 100 ml chicken stock
  • 2 tablesp light soy
  • 2 tablesp fish sauce
  • Salt & Pepper
  • Parsley

Heat oil in a large pan and gently fry the paste for about 2 mins.

Now start adding the main ingredients – start with the onions and fry gently for 4 – 5 minutes.  Add in the your prepared marrow, peas and beans with all the rest of the ingredients.

Bring to the boil, then simmer gently for about half an hour until the marrow is cooked.

Serve with some basmati rice.

I have to admit it was ‘fingers crossed’ before I served this…. but it got a huge thumbs up…. from someone who doesn’t like vegetarian and especially doesn’t like courgettes! Score!

Hope you try it and enjoy!

Let me know how you develop your ‘green’ curry!

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Cauliflower & Courgette Salad

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , on September 26, 2012 | 2 Comments »

I know, I know, the season for salads is most probably over, and this week has been more about soups!

I HATE THAT WINTER IS UPON US!

In particular, I hate that it is dark by 7.30 pm.  I love the long days.

However, putting all that aside, we still have lots of produce coming from the garden and the polytunnel here in Redwood.

My one courgette plant is being so prolific this year…. much to ‘you know who’s’ distress!  But, but I did succeed the other evening in convincing him with this salad!!! Yeah!

Courgette & Cauliflower Salad

Again just catering for the two of us….

I grated half a medium courgette.  Cut about quarter of a (raw) cauliflower into bite size florets.  Mix in some mayonnaise to taste…. and then, add in a sprinkling (about a teaspoon) of grated Parmesan.

Really lovely!

Enjoy!

And now I’m off to the garden to gather up some more of the harvest :)

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